Cisco uses a grading system on each question right through the whole test. You might just get 70% right but will still pass. Some questions are not scored. Cisco puts them in the test to see how people deal with them.

2600 series routers support Fast ethernet which is needed to set up router on a stick. Provided you have a 2900 + series switch. Otherwise 2500 router or 1900 switch will connect everything fine. CCNA exam doesn't support 1900 series switch any more though.

I'm using Cisco self study books - which I bought and the Wendell Odom intro and ICND pdf versions. The cisco books cover about 750 pages or so where as the Odom books go over the 1000 page mark. Overall I would say The odom books cover the topics slightly better but I don't like how every command answer is shown via the show run output. The cisco books are more straight to the point but harder to understand. It took me 3 months to go through both though. I still forget stuff and have to re-read topics.

Also I have the boson netsim cd which has over 100 labs to study from. It is quite comprehensive but doesn't support all the high level commands which a real router would.

Maybe you can tell us your network setup, what cables you're using to join the routers, and if any of the other config files are different from the one displayed below. I notice you have the clock rate set on serial 0, so are you using back to back serial cable. Telnet but no icmp, does one of the joining routers have an access-list on it?

I have worked in a big network which used them but I never got to understand what they did fully before I left that job.

Is this what they are and do.I couldn't really find any good data on them so I'm just guessing. Please correct me if I'm wrong:

They act as a central management switch are based in your data center/server room etc. Then off these run swicthes to your floors which connect your users. The core switch runs as a VLAN Membership Policy Server (VMPS). It uses a different operating system than a IOS based switch. On it you set up a particular Vlan, and assign it an IP subnet range. The vlan database on the core holds the mapping of mac addresses to vlan assignment. So when you add a dynamic port to a vlan on a floor switch. The computer's MAC address is learned by the core switch and it is mapped to a particular Vlan.

So if the above is correct no IOS switch can act as a central vlan repository. An IOS switch can only have a management IP which you telnet into, it can't have an IP subnet representing a particular Vlan, but it can have computers running from it who reside in different vlan subnets.

I purchased a 2924 on ebay for $250 and it seems good but the commands are slightly different than the 2950 judging by my books.

If you have the money or your company is paying for your CCNA go the 2950.

However even a 1900 will do, but make sure they are the enterprise version which has the CLI on it. 1900's only have 1-2 fast ethernet ports though. I also purchased a 1900 standard switch which uses a menu system, which is ok for just plugging in cable.

So I have 2 2501's routers, a 2924 and a 1900 switch inc 2 Aui/eth converters and 2 DTE/DCE cables. I played around with my lab for a while but now i just mostly use my router sim program which is quicker - Boson CCNA netsim. Even that doesn't support everything I want to do though.